Comedian felt it ‘was the end’ during years when business dried up
The 44-year-old Cork native told of the knock-on effect the loss of his job at Dublin radio station Q102 had on him.
He said he left the station in shock less than an hour of being told of the decision, which he blamed on the “accountants”.
“I remember leaving in a state of shock, walking out to Dún Laoghaire, the sun was shining, it was a beautiful day... walked down the big long pier at the end of Dún Laoghaire and sat at the lighthouse at the rock facing down into the sea and sat there looking out to sea going ‘Jesus what was all that about?’”
After struggling through 2008, he and his wife moved their family to Cork from Dublin.
“We left in 2009. That was the worst year. That was just disaster. There was no work happening at all. Gigs had stopped. My normal business at that stage was corporate gigs, after dinner functions, doing compere, doing MC. Nobody was spending money. The tap was turned off completely.
“We couldn’t sell the house, so we rented and rented in Cork. There was a gap of three months of paying rent down in Cork and nothing coming in here. All of a sudden there was €1,500 being squeezed out of you every month. What you learn when you are not earning anything is that the money disappears straight away. It’s gone. Sucking you dry.”
In an interview with RTÉ radio, he said he hit a wall, experiencing a darkness he had never encountered.
“A complete feeling of nothing mattered, nothing cared, didn’t want to talk to anybody,” he said. “Thought this was the end. What am I going to do now?”
Mr Shortt said he then realised there were a lot of people in the same position.
“We wallowed in our own level of nothingness which made you feel a bit better that there were other people out there the same as you. What I eventually started doing was writing about it. If I went into a really dark place I would write those thoughts onto the computer and leave them there.”
He said when he looked back on those thoughts a year later “there was scary stuff in there”.
“The darkest part was ‘I used to fear death and now I fear life’,” he said. “Then there were the demons dragging you down, thoughts of lack of confidence and self doubt.”
Life turned around in late 2009 when he did a play.
“It got me a whole new level of confidence, being able to stage up on the stage again and act and make myself cry and do all sorts of things and it made me think ‘I must be good at what I do’.
“I changed my whole thought process in gigs. Instead of doing gags and normal stuff, I just spoke about reality, about where we are, where we were.”
Now he is still not financially as well as off as previously, but is in a much better place.
“I would not be OK at all,” he said. “It is how to manage the debt. It is constantly talking with the bank. Some stuff will have to stay on interest only. Summer 2010 was the busiest I had been in a long time.
“This winter has been the busiest in three years. It is going from earning wodges of money to earning €20,000 a year.”
